First the snow. It fell this week. Eight inches. And that is just the natural stuff. The other stuff came from guns, the application of pressure + water and very cold temperatures. All of which makes for a very welcome Friday morning!

Then there’s the phrase “ski the east.” It comes with a bit of bravado or bravery because we know what we can do. Ice/east, they nearly rhyme. And, here in the East we take it that we can take all conditions from rain to bulletproof to even, yes, powder and we have had all this and more this week. This has been a week where you could call the Catskills a four-season resort. That is, all four seasons in one seven-day period. And these seven days have seen many ski hills challenged and sending out apologies and mea culpas to their skiers.

At Platty, it rained too. We can’t hide that. And then the rain turned to something else, something far firmer and harder, but the water, now that might be called a blessing. A deluge one day = full ponds the next. And that translates into very fine, fine snowmaking. Especially since the temps plunged just after.

Now a game of connect the dots has translated into snowmaking on both sides of the mountain and a series of phrases:

Save the Whales becomes now a Whale of a good time.

And A river runs through it= a lot of water in the ponds, which is a lot of snow around the hill.

The other thing to add to those phrases is Save the Mountain—because this weekend will be spring skiing (AKA sunny and warm), and there has now been so much snow made that there will be spare to push around. With any luck Buckle Up will have Blockbuster and it’s 1k+ straight vert in play this weekend too.

With all this spring sunshine coming all we need are Hawaiian shirts and drinks on the deck, because you can live all four seasons in a week here.